Begins like a tone fire we’ll come to burn with in the record’s hidden appendages; but as a first kiss, it’s nothing short on mystery—a dazzle of tranquility and the sinister; an unknown; a whale song sunk deep in mood and moan with the flotsam spits of a delicate cymbal. And then the grind—something distortion heavy, something unfounded punk. I could just call it grunge, but why chew on old clichés? Like any good song, especially an opener, “Once” reinvents itself with time—time of day, month of year, spot of soul. Even the stage gives us varied howls. So as the flannel commits its thread to flags of memory, “Once” still comes in with proper grind—truly “upon a time.”

The distortion quickly gives way to a kind of pyramid building cadence—heavy to the pinnacle—until Krusen’s percussion crashes through like Moses or Napoleon cannons. Guitars find shape swiftly with a frantic spun riff—climbing with their teeth to consume the next step of themselves, bouncing shoulders like any good Gossard drive—this is how mosh pits get started. Then the drums open the gates, and the voice . . .

While it may not have been the first Vedder utterance for most (with “Alive” and “Even Flow” already on general video rotation), it was for me.

“I admit it.”

These were the first: a confession without yet knowing the deed; a questioning both patient and urgent—going mad for more but wanting to savor the stretch—anticipated addiction, a sexy splinter, a birthing worship. The voice was reckoning, antic and savage, archaic and new—paradoxes shop here when they want to look their best.

The riff lightens here, but not for lack of intensity—like seeing slackness in a noose. Guitars loop and lasso with the introspective lyrics. The images shake: a man in the streets, tremor-stricken—a revolver in one hand, a bottle of pills in the other, rattling.
We crescendo into pre-chorus. Vedder’s locomotive narration stampedes by like a charge of mad bison—promised threat, promised noise, bone suspense; we know they’re running for a cliff edge.

Vedder wails out the chorus with a supplicant character misery. His protagonist remembers who he was, what he used to be able to do—the memory of a rational calm adding further torment to the madness. The man is a broken shade of child with hands like prayers. Guitars build cradles of distortion. The whole frenzy is a devoured nursery rhyme: the infant plea of the insane, the stumble thump to becoming, the irony of “once upon a time.”

The solo is a wet rag wringing blood, sweat, and tears—a torn cloth trying to fling itself free of saturation; the bit of killer’s shirt the victim grabbed in a panic. It whips like a rattail, wanting fiercely out of a Raskolnikov dream. It screams—it stammers. It screams.

The song bridges with a kind of punching bag rumble—a herd of Trojan horses at the gallop. Vedder comes in low, almost imperceptible, like a stalker’s poem; he grants the axe passage again. And the outro screeches, stretches like a Dante summit—building upside down into beautiful agony. The damned wipe their mouths. A madman spits to wash his hands. We build: what used to be, what never will. We love—until echoes trade music for our hearts.

A new sound has begun.